


Never Alone

by ellebeedarling



Series: Never Alone [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post War, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 18:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebeedarling/pseuds/ellebeedarling
Summary: Kaidan kept a silent vigil beside Shepard’s bed throughout the days, weeks, months of this terror-inducing absence of the man he loved so desperately he ached with it. Kaidan had never felt so scared or alone in his life.Only he was almost never alone.





	Never Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Estalfaed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estalfaed/gifts).



> Treat for the incomparable estalfaed! Enjoy my friend!
> 
> Unbeta-ed, so all mistakes are my own!

Life was strange - funny, unpredictable, enjoyable, cruel. Different things at different times. Sometimes, inexplicably, all of those at once. Sometimes it was monotonous, days on a seemingly, never-ending time loop, destined to repeat the same mundanities over and over and over. Kaidan was feeling all these things at the moment, and underlying all of it was a profoundly startling sense of deep, abiding peace. 

 

The war was over. Shepard’s body, crumpled and destroyed, had been recovered from the wreckage of the Citadel. He was unconscious but breathing, broken but healing, battered but so magnificently  _ alive _ , and Kaidan’s emotions were a stomach-dropping roller coaster reflecting all of the above with painful acuity. 

 

Dutifully, Kaidan kept a silent vigil beside Shepard’s bed throughout the days, weeks, months of this terror-inducing  _ absence _ of the man he loved so desperately he ached with it. Kaidan had never felt so scared or alone in his life. 

 

Only he was almost never alone. 

 

When the Normandy had returned to Earth after weeks of being stranded on a lush, beautiful garden world - that was perfect in every way except that it wasn’t  _ home _ \- Kaidan had been ushered into Shepard’s private, secluded room in the ruins of a bombed-out hospital to find John strapped to every conceivable device. A man with scars and tattoos covering half the surface of his body loomed over Shepard’s prone form on the bed. At first, Kaidan thought the man was a danger, an assassin, perhaps, sent in to finish off the job the Reapers had begun. Possibly the man was indoctrinated. Then Kaidan’s eyes had adjusted, and he’d recognized Zaeed Massani as one of the Normandy’s crew members that he’d had missed out on. They’d met at the party in Anderson’s apartment. Kaidan had thought the man was handsome in a dangerous sort of way, and dangerous in a sexy sort of way, but there had been little more to their interactions than that. 

 

“Shepard and I had a bit of a… thing… before,” Massani said, mismatched eyes cast forlornly on the ruined occupant of the bed. 

 

Kaidan’s heart had plummeted to his feet, a vicious stab of jealousy and hurt until he remembered that he had held no claims to Shepard, no right to think that Shepard shouldn’t have someone to share his time with before that night at Apollo’s Cafe. So he’d tamped down the envy that was clawing at his heart, and extended a hand to Massani to shake, and that had been the beginning of something Kaidan would never have expected. 

 

Every day was the same. Kaidan would show up at the hospital to find Zaeed slumped, in a cramp-inducing position, in the cracked vinyl armchair that the hospital staff had dug up from somewhere. His fingertips would be resting lightly on the sheet beside Shepard’s elbow, and Kaidan would be imbued with a peculiar emotion that was too complicated to sort out. One part jealousy, one part sympathy, and one part abstract fondness for the man. Zaeed would wake, sometimes just with the sense that he was no longer alone in the room, and other times by Kaidan’s gentle prodding, and give Kaidan a succinct sitrep on Shepard’s condition and improvement, or lack thereof, throughout the night. Kaidan would take over the day shift, and the routine would repeat itself in the evening. 

 

Kaidan began bringing coffee and ration bars, and they began to talk of other things while consuming their meager breakfast. Zaeed was one of the best storytellers Kaidan had ever met, and he kept Kaidan in stitches as he spun yarn after yarn. Kaidan was never quite sure if all of them were true or if Zaeed simply specialized in being an exceptional bullshitter, but sometimes he caught a gleam in Massani’s eyes that made him shiver with the  _ trueness _ of the man, the sense that Zaeed was old beyond his years, the certainty that he’d seen more than any one man had a right to. 

 

Zaeed began bringing Kaidan dinner when they swapped shifts in the evening - MREs and cold coffee, the occasional beer - procured from someplace Kaidan probably didn’t want to know about - and cigar, and the two of them would take a walk outside through the rapidly clearing rubble around the area now referred to as ‘town.’ It was nothing more than an area where the Alliance had begun to rebuild the government and infrastructure needed to sustain a society, housed within the least corroded of all the buildings in London. People were still spread far and wide, starving and suffering, and though both Kaidan and Zaeed did their parts to help, it was apparent to each of them, and everyone else, what their number one priority was. 

 

One night Zaeed showed up with a bottle of whiskey. “Been six months,” he said, something foreign and broken in his voice, and gestured toward the bed with the bottle. Shepard lay there, unmoving, unseeing, chest rising and falling artificially with the hiss-click of the ventilator. His bruises had healed, but the scars remained - violent, flame-orange gashes along his jaw and cheekbones. They stood out garishly against his pale, pale skin, cheeks gaunt and hollow and sunken in. He looked almost emaciated, and it turned Kaidan’s stomach to think of how  _ dead _ he looked. It was almost impossible to imagine how he’d been before the end. Tired and worn down, but still full of fire and a will to live. Even harder still was to picture that fresh-faced commander he’d met on the Normandy years ago, back when the world was a less scary and dangerous place to be. 

 

Kaidan’s body began to tremble before he felt the wetness on his cheeks. Shepard had been fighting what felt like a losing battle, and Kaidan had lost track of the passing time, his life a routine of endless days and night, rinse and repeat, and nothing ever changing. Zaeed took him by the elbow and led him out into the starry night and into a rover that, again, he’d managed to procure from somewhere that Kaidan probably shouldn’t know about. At the command of Zaeed’s pointed finger, Kaidan climbed into the vehicle and draped himself limply across the seat. Zaeed took position behind the steering controls and piloted them out of the city. 

 

They moved slowly, wheels of the Mako crawling cautiously over the piles of rubble that still littered the landscape like dormant beasts in the moonlight. In time, there was less rubble, more starlight and trees. Zaeed stopped under a cluster of ancient oak trees, somehow unscathed from the Reaper attack, and the two of them climbed down from the Mako. An armload of blankets was also produced from the vehicle, and they spread out two, wrapped one around each of their shoulders and sat. 

 

The view from the hill they were parked on was breathtaking. Magnificent, sweeping hills rolled into forested valleys, and the silvery light of the moon rendered everything magical. It was an area untouched by the Reapers and by sapient life in general, it seemed.

 

“How the hell did you find this place?” Kaidan breathed as he stared in wide-eyed wonder at the valley below them. 

 

“Grew up not far from here,” Zaeed confessed, cracking open the whiskey bottle and passing it to Kaidan first. His voice sounded like gravel and smoke. “It’s a wildlife preserve. No sapient life. No need for the goddamn Reapers to touch it.” 

 

They drank in silence, letting the cool breeze and majestic view and fiery whiskey numb the pain they were both apparently feeling. Kaidan hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to get away from that hospital with his odd sterile-yet-dusty smell, the unending beep and click of machinery that kept Shepard unnaturally tethered to this world. The air around them was crisp and clean, scented with grass and soil and pine trees. There was the faintest acerbic odor of the whiskey where the bottle floated between them, and the wind carried the warm, grounding fragrance of another human being into Kaidan’s senses. 

 

“Why’d you bring me out here?” Kaidan asked when they were teetering on the edge of intoxication. 

 

“Thought you could use the break,” Zaeed said, taking another swig from the bottle. “You’re no good to Shepard if you’re all burned out and used up when he comes back. You need to start taking care of yourself, goddamnit.” 

 

The words were so impassioned, so sincere, that they almost felt like a physical blow to Kaidan’s jaw. Zaeed was just as concerned for him as he was for Shepard. Something inside him snagged and ripped, tearing his heart open with a jagged wound that wasn’t likely to heal any time soon. He was, in that moment, profoundly lonesome. 

 

Touch-starved and a bit tipsy, Kaidan felt like he was lingering somewhere outside of himself when he leaned over to press his lips firmly to Zaeed Massani’s. Zaeed remained unresponsive, and Kaidan felt the sting of rejection, the shame of betraying the man he loved lying in a hospital miles away, still fighting for his life. “I’m sorry,” Kaidan whispered. 

 

“I’m not,” Zaeed said, and there was that trueness again. This was real and not an unfortunate nightmare, and Kaidan’s broken heart shivered and trembled with pain and confusion. Zaeed ran a hand through his hair and blew out a long sigh as Kaidan stared at the blanket between his feet. “I’m not sorry,” Zaeed repeated. “Been wanting to do that for awhile now, myself. But…”

 

“Shepard,” Kaidan finished for him. 

 

“Bloody Shepard,” Massani agreed. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear. ‘Specially not just now, but… I’m still in love with him.” 

 

“I know.” 

 

“I think I’m in love with you, too.” 

 

Kaidan didn’t raise his head, didn’t speak. His heart sank even lower as it echoed the words Zaeed had just spoken. “I know,” he repeated. “I’m in love with you, too.”  Two men to love; two men out of his reach. Neither of them had any way of knowing what tomorrow would hold. Shepard could wake up and be normal. He could wake up and have no idea who any of them were. Or he could never wake up again. And it was the not-knowing that was slowly killing Kaidan. Zaeed was here, right now, and whole as he thought Zaeed Massani would ever be. …And he wanted to wait, because he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting Shepard any more than Kaidan could.

 

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Zaeed said. Kaidan didn’t look up at this either, simply hung his head lower and sighed grimly. “Hackett asked me to investigate rumors of some batarian ships lurking in the shadows behind Saturn. Shouldn’t be gone more than a few days.” 

 

“Probably for the best anyway,” Kaidan said, words sounding vacant and distant even to his own ears. 

 

“We can decide what to do about… all this, when I get back,” Zaeed offered, capping the whiskey bottle and standing. He reached out a hand to Kaidan, who took it and let himself be drawn up off the forest floor. Zaeed brushed a gentle hand through Kaidan’s wind-swept hair. “I’ll take you home. You need to sleep.” 

 

Kaidan simply nodded.

 

**

 

Kaidan relayed the story of everything that had transpired over the last six months. Both Shepard and Zaeed were watching him with matching blank expressions, and Kaidan could see why the pair of them had been drawn to each other. He wanted to roll his eyes, wanted to pace, thought briefly that peeling his own skin off would be less painful than the torment of waiting for Shepard to respond. Eventually, Zaeed stood to peer out the window, and Shepard sighed heavily from the bed. 

 

“I’m not angry,” he said. “About the kiss. Not at all. I…” he paused to search for the right words. He’d only been awake for a few days when Zaeed had returned from Saturn. Things had been confused at first, but his mind seemed to be clearing. Both Kaidan and Zaeed had caught him staring at them each in turn, a light flickering to life within his eyes as if he were fitting the puzzle pieces together slowly in his mind. Now, Shepard swallowed and lifted his eyes to meet both of the men in the room. “What now?”

 

“What do you want?” Zaeed asked from his corner by the window. Kaidan had the distinct impression that Zaeed felt like an outsider. Though they’d both had relationships with Shepard in the past, Kaidan’s was - for practical purposes - the current one. He sensed that if Shepard told Zaeed to leave, the merc would, and he’d never come back. The thought pulled at Kaidan’s heart and tore it open, like picking a scab off a wound that begins to bleed again. Air felt shoddy and sparse. 

 

“Well,” Shepard said slowly, “I mean…”

 

“Just say it,” Kaidan said when Shepard’s words had died off and the silence had become suffocating. “If you want one of us to leave - or both of us, just-”

 

“I don’t want either of you to leave,” Shepard said quietly, staring down at the blanket he was twisting in his fingers. “I want you both.” 

 

The world stopped spinning, and everything shifted off kilter, like a ship banking hard to port. Shepard still sat on the bed, lip trembling as he tried to contain his emotion; Kaidan and Zaeed stood in the center of the room, gaping like idiots. 

 

It was Zaeed who finally made the first move, crossing the room and sitting on the bed next to Shepard. Without a care for the various bits of wire and hose that were still trailing out of him, he pulled John into his arms, burying his face in the man’s neck. Kaidan moved more slowly, sinking cautiously onto the other side of the bed. Shepard reached for him, looked into his eyes with a sad and desperate question swimming in their blue depths. Kaidan’s smile uncurled slowly, followed by a brief nod, and tears finally spilled out of Shepard’s eyes, rolling down his cheeks. John reached for him, pulling him close, and the three of them sat there, huddled together.

 

“You two are a couple of goddamn saps,” Zaeed said as both Kaidan and John swiped the tears from their eyes, but his voice was just as thick with emotion as theirs. 

 

Shepard laughed, and drew him close for a lingering kiss that made promises for the future, before turning to Kaidan and offering him the same. Finally, John watched with a delirious smile on his face, as Kaidan kissed Zaeed, slow and passionate and full of everything that had been growing between them for the last six months. All vestiges of the fear and anxiety Kaidan had felt since the war ended melted away in the wake of this new, inexpressible joy, and his heart felt full to bursting as the three of them rested their heads together and breathed, “I love you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
